Seven arrested in U.S. plot

Tuesday

Jul 28, 2009 at 12:01 AMJul 28, 2009 at 1:00 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina father who led an unobtrusive rural life as a drywall contractor had militant roots dating back to 1980s Afghanistan and Pakistan and secretly led a U.S. group plotting international terrorism, federal prosecutors said.

Daniel Patrick Boyd, 39, was arrested yesterday with his two sons and four other North Carolina men. Prosecutors accused them of military-style training at home and plotting “violent jihad” through a series of terror attacks abroad.

Authorities believe Boyd’s roots in terrorism run deep. They said when he was in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1989 through 1992, he had military-style training in terrorist camps and fought the Soviets, who were ending their occupation of Afghanistan.

Prosecutors said Boyd’s time in Pakistan also included terrorist training that he brought back to North Carolina, where over the past three years, he recruited followers willing to die as martyrs waging jihad — the Arabic word for holy war.

Prosecutors would not detail what the group was targeting overseas. An indictment said they provided money, training, transportation and men to help terrorists. Boyd and some of the others traveled to Israel in June 2007 intending to wage “violent jihad” but returned home without success, the document said.

Sons Zakariya Boyd, 20, and Dylan Boyd, 22, were named in the indictment. Another son, Luqman, died two years ago in a car accident.

The others charged are Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziyad Yaghi, 21. Hysen Sherifi, 24, a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent resident, also was charged in the case. He was the only person arrested who was not a U.S. citizen.

The seven men made their first court appearances yesterday in Raleigh, charged with providing material support to terrorism and “conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad.” They’re scheduled to appear in court again on Thursday for a detention hearing.

No attorneys for the men were listed in court records. If convicted, they could face life in prison.

Boyd lived at an unassuming lakeside home in a rural area south of Raleigh, where he and his family operated a drywall business.

Jim Stephenson, a neighbor in Willow Spring, said he often saw the Boyd family walking their dog. The indictment shocked neighbors.

“We never saw anything to give any clues that something like that could be going on in their family,” Stephenson said.

In 1991, Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan. They also were accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. Each was sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the decision was later overturned.

Their wives told The Associated Press in an interview at the time that the couples had U.S. roots but the United States was a country of “kafirs” — Arabic for heathens.

It is unclear when Boyd and his family returned to the United States, but in March 2006, Boyd traveled to Gaza and attempted to introduce his son to individuals who also believed that violent jihad was a personal religious obligation, the indictment said. The document did not say which son Boyd took to Gaza.

Reached at her home in Silver Spring, Md., Boyd’s mother said she knew nothing about the current case. “It certainly sounds weird to me,” Pat Saddler said.

In 1991 in Pakistan, Daniel Boyd and his older brother denied they were guilty of stealing $3,200 from the bank. When the sentence was imposed, Boyd shouted: “This isn’t an Islamic court. It’s a court of infidels!”

It’s unclear how U.S. authorities learned of the allegations of the past three years, although court documents indicate that prosecutors will introduce evidence gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Several of the defendants, including Boyd and his sons, also face firearms charges. The indictment says they had obtained a variety of weapons from handguns to rifles.

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